Chromie

Abilities

Sand Blast (Q)

Reduced the number of Sand Blast hits required to unlock the Sand Blast echo from 80 to 60

Talents

Level 2

Timely Surprise (E)

Now also increases the cast range of Time Trap by 33%

Developer Comment: Only about 40% of Chromie players were unlocking the echo over the course of a game, and among players that did it was occurring later than we’d like. By reducing the requirements for completing Chromie’s quest, we won’t increase her late game power at all, but make her output a little more consistent.

Developer Comment: As expected, there is a fairly large discrepancy between Kel’Thuzad’s performance across the entire game vs. players who are getting experienced with him at a higher level. His win-rate has climbed more than most of our other releases as players get used to his kit, so most of our changes are aimed at talent balance and toning his power down. While we like the sharpness of his power spike due to Master of the Cold Dark, we’ll continue to keep an eye on his burst potential and his overall strength going forward.

The Butcher

Stats

Basic Attack damage increased from 125 to 130

Health scaling per level increased from 4 to 4.5%

Health Regeneration scaling per level increased from 4 to 4.5%

Developer Comment: While we’ll be continuing to keep an eye on it, we believe that the Butcher’s quest tuning is appropriate. He has seen a significant drop in win rate in Hero League since our last round of changes, so we felt it was appropriate to increase his late-game Health so that he can keep up with other heroes, who often get many tools to survive his initial damage in teamfights.

Hitting an enemy Hero in the center portion of Arcane Flare reduces the cooldown of Arcane Flare to 1 second

Hyper Shift (Z)

Cooldown reduction per Hero healed increased from 2 to 3 seconds

Unfurling Spray (Trait)

Removed

Level 4

Arcane Barrage (Q)

Removed

Peekaboo (Z)

Revealed area radius reduced from 20 to 15

Added functionality:

Pixie Dust is now applied to the target of Phase Shift

Level 7

Phase Shield (Z)

Added functionality:

Now applies Shield to Brightwing and her target

Developer Comment: While Brightwing has been seeing a bit more play recently, her talent tree had some low-hanging fruit that we wanted to trim. Granting her a slightly larger range of Soothing Mist baseline will free up a more impactful choice at level 1. The addition of Arcane Barrage’s functionality into Dream Shot should also make that talent a bit more exciting to pick up. Overall, we were looking at giving the Faerie Dragon a few minor buffs and adjusting some talents in order to increase parity amongst her talent tiers.

Tyrande

Warriors

Chen

Talents

Level 1

Grounding Brew (D)

Removed

Level 7

Purifying Brew (D)

Cooldown reduced from 45 to 15 seconds

Added functionality:

Chen now gains 30 Spell Armor while channeling Fortifying Brew

Developer Comment: We realize how difficult it is for most Chen players to pass up Brewmaster’s Balance on Tier 3. We moved a powerful level 20 down to compete with it a couple patches ago but the data is still showing it as an underperformer. Lowering the cooldown drastically and granting it the functionality of Grounding Brew should incentivize players into choosing it when playing against certain team compositions.

Developer Comment: These changes are a response to community feedback about Garrosh’s Mana costs. We initially kept them relatively low, as he is a fairly low impact Warrior when his combo is not available to him, however we agreed with the feedback and felt that he could use more Mana management.